As office machines evolve over time, they offer more and more conveniences to the user. Printers are no exception. From automated typewriters, to inkjet printers, to laser printers, printers are far more capable today than earlier versions of even a year or two ago. One particular improvement in printers is the advent of color printers. Color printers have opened a wide range of applications to businesses allowing users to print color print jobs directly from the user's computer terminal by sending a print command to the printer. No expensive color printing processing is required.
Printers that are capable of printing colors range in cost from printers with dedicated individualized color toner compartments that may be individually removed and replaced, to much less expensive color printers that utilize multi-chambered cartridges holding a variety of toner colors. While the multi-chambered cartridges are cheaper, a difficulty arises in their use. This difficulty is that printers that use such multi-chambered cartridges always have one color used up completely before the other colors have been optimally used. This renders the unused colors, and hence the entire color cartridge, useless for most color purposes. Further, the typical response is to simply replace a cartridge when one of the colors is empty. This is a costly solution and a waste of unused toner colors.
Another prior art solution to the problem is to manually note the lowest color in a multi-chambered cartridge and try to avoid its use. Obviously, a real disadvantage of this process is that it is difficult and time consuming for most users to learn how to inspect the cartridge and to determine what specific color is lowest from such an inspection. A further disadvantage of this process is that even if they determine which color is low, most users are unable to determine what colors may be achieved by using combinations of the primary cartridge colors that do remain in the multi-chambered cartridge.
Thus, there is a need in the art for providing a toner advisor apparatus and method that enables a user of imaging devices to maximize toner usage over time.